In some situations relating to maintenance, testing, inspection, repair, disassembly of machines, vehicles, and/or equipment, hardware is misplaced, stolen, or lost. For example, during maintenance, testing, inspection, repair, or disassembly of an automobile door assembly, the hardware for securing and fastening one of the parts onto the door assembly may be lost. Furthermore, misplacement of hardware during the disassembly process creates confusion during reassembly as the hardware may not be in the appropriate location. Moreover, the scattering of hardware increases the risk of foreign objects or debris (FOD) and extra parts being present. This may cause additional loss of hardware during the assembly, disassembly, maintenance, testing, inspection, repair, or reassembly processes.
The conventional strategy is to purchase numerous replacement hardware and parts or continue reassembly with missing hardware. This often causes problems and increases risk because the conventional strategy does not account for the misplacement of hardware during reassembly. For example, a technician may place hardware belonging to the fore component of an assembly incorrectly on the aft component resulting in a loose fitting and/or malfunctioning of the equipment. The conventional strategy to address this is to increase staff man hours, provide more specialized staff training, hire security for loss prevention, or installation of added layers of facility security on work sites. These conventional strategies increase overall costs while adding unnecessary layers of complexity to the process. There is a need to provide a more effective solution to these problems and risk factors.